


Creation Stories

by Gileonnen



Category: Craft Sequence - Max Gladstone
Genre: Bureaucratic Labyrinths, Gen, Legal Entanglements, New-made Gods, Nightmares of Drowning, Prophet Children, creation myths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 12:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5497457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>In the beginning there was the Word, which burned.</i> As Izza raises a new religion on the ashes of Kavekana's idols, she must learn to navigate the labyrinth of bureaucracy that could protects her new goddess--or entrap her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creation Stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/gifts).



_In the beginning there was the Word, which burned. Its flame was the blue-gold of sunlight through seawater, the color of dawn catching a cresting wave. "If you let me write this word on your bones, you will never again be chained," said the witch, and the Blue Lady (who knew well how the sun looked through deep water) answered, "Never to any but you."_

The ship was sinking.

"Are you familiar with the concept of 'liability'?" asked Ms. Kevarian. She sat on the ladder leading up from the ship's hold--it was only a set of stairs; Izza didn't know why sailors called it a ladder--with her hands folded primly in her lap.

While Ms. Kevarian waited for an answer, the ship's hull warped around her. Timbers groaned in agony, then began to bow and buckle; the pitch between the slats pulled away from the wood, until there was nothing to keep out the sea. Everywhere the wood bent, dark water seeped in. The ocean licked at Izza's ankles.

Izza tried to concentrate on the question. "I've heard the word," she muttered. _You're a liability_ , a skinny thief had told her in a port city off the Gleb, when she got too big for him to boost into second-story windows. She understood that the word meant _something he didn't want anymore_.

The water was up to her knees now. Ms. Kevarian was still dry. Not a drop on her shiny leather shoes, not a hair out of place ... but of course, it wasn't Ms. Kevarian's nightmare.

"In my work," she said, "'liability' refers to legal responsibility. A person who is liable experiences the consequences for inaction or wrongdoing enacted on her behalf, even if she herself did nothing wrong. Do you understand the term?"

The other Craftswoman--the Albrecht woman, all bones and smoke and jewels--would've asked, _Do you understand the term, Jalai'iz?_ She liked to use Izza's real name when she was asking questions, as though she could turn that name into an incantation to bind her. But she always got the glottal stop wrong, and if Izza didn't know much about Craft, she did know you had to get a name right to use it against someone.

"I understand," said Izza. The ship shuddered. A timber peeled away, whining like a green branch being broken; the hungry ocean spilled silently into the gap. The water was almost up to her waist now. It smelled of sulfur and salt and rot, of black blood and bile. _It's a story,_ she told herself, even as her hands scraped the dark surface of the waves. _I can tell better stories than this._

"There are certain parties who wish to assert that the newly awakened entity called the Mother is liable for deliberate financial mismanagement undertaken in Her name. They claim that, because She was capable of disbursing blessings or soul without the direction of Her financial managers, She can be considered a responsible party and may therefore be held accountable for all transactions carried out on Her behalf. This includes all blessings and benedictions performed in manifestations such as Seven Alpha or the Blue Lady, as well as all other idol-mediated transactions." She paused there. Her brows lifted slightly. In the darkness of the ship's hold, her pale face was a gleaming beacon.

"That's stupid," said Izza. Ms. Kevarian didn't answer. She looked at Izza like she was waiting for her to figure something out.

The water lapped at the lower stairs of the ladder. _If you ran past her, you could escape_ , thought Izza, but that was no answer. If she ran past Ms. Kevarian in a nightmare, there would only be something worse on the other side of her.

Izza looked down at the water. Glass bottles and fishing floats bobbed on the churning surface. They clinked against each other, each chime a knell that urged her to flee. "If She's liable for all of that, then anyone can sue Her. Anyone who ever had an idol. And they'll take everything, piece by piece, until there's no soul left in Her."

Still Ms. Kevarian did not answer. Izza was up to her ribs now; the ladder looked very long, and the hatch very far away. She could hear the ship breaking all around her, and feel the floor dropping away under her feet.

 _If I were telling the story, it'd be Smiling Jack at the top of the ladder._ "The people who want to prove She's liable--they want to kill Her. That's why they're doing this."

Ms. Kevarian said nothing for a long moment, which was all the answer Izza needed.

From the charged salt air, Ms. Kevarian drew a knife Crafted of pure soul. She carved a glyph on the darkness; it glittered like a star. "As the prophet of the Mother, there is a chance that Her liability may redound upon you or your associates." _Nick_ , thought Izza, as each low wave splashed her shoulders. _Sophie. All the kids who just wanted something to believe in._ "Of course, we have ample documentation of your involvement with Her manifestations. Testimony, financial records both doctored and intact, physical evidence of your interactions with each of Her conscious manifestations within your cohort's chapel. But we can mitigate that entanglement, to some extent. The firm of Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao is prepared to witness and authenticate your sworn affidavit that you are in no way liable for the network of idols which constitute the Mother."

Izza's soles left the deck. She began to tread water. _Think_ , she told herself fiercely. _She's trying to move you around like a game piece. But she wants you to know she's moving you, and she's told you enough for you to make a choice._ "That thing--" she said, and looked at the glyph "--that's the affidavit?"

Ms. Kevarian nodded. "A drop of your blood will seal it, and impress it on your bones. You will be able to walk away."

Izza saw the glyph gleaming on the water, and thought of the Blue Lady drowning in the pool in the caldera. Over the copper-salt stench of the sea, there came a faint breath of incense.

Izza remembered her kids gathered around the corpse of a bird. She remembered how they'd leaned in, glassy-eyed with hunger for a story like Sophie had told--for the kind of story that made them a people, if they kept believing it together. For a story that could kindle a goddess to life, if only there were a spark of the divine.

She knew, without having to be told, that the priests up the mountain had never told stories like Sophie's.

"I'm Her prophet," said Izza, "and I told the stories that made Her. That means I'm responsible for Her, and everyone who believes."

"Are you sure you can bear that responsibility?" asked Ms. Kevarian, but now there was a light in her eyes that was brighter than the light of the glyph.

"No. But someone has to, and I guess it's me."

With her eyes still fixed on Ms. Kevarian's, Izza let the waves close over her.

She woke gasping on the floor of the chapel, her shirt soaked in sweat. It was high tide, and the waves lapped at the feet of the dead gods.


End file.
